


Devil's Acre

by ansketil



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26044873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ansketil/pseuds/ansketil
Summary: Matthew Murdock is trying to find the man responsible for all the recent bloodshed in Devil's Acre and ends up getting more than he bargained for. A Regency London AU for the prompt: regency!daredevil - matt/fisk
Relationships: Wilson Fisk/Matt Murdock
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Devil's Acre

_“The 'Devil’s Acre,' as it is familiarly known in the neighbourhood, is the square block comprised between Dean, Peter, and Tothill Streets, and Strutton Ground. It is permeated by Orchard Street, St. Anne’s Street, Old and New Pye Streets, Pear Street, Perkins’ Rents, and Duck Lane. From some of these, narrow covered passage-ways lead into small quadrangular courts, containing but a few crazy, tumble-down-looking houses, and inhabited by characters of the most equivocal description. The district, which is small in area, is one of the most populous in London, almost every house being crowded with numerous families, and multitudes of lodgers. There are other parts of the town as filthy, dingy, and forbidding in appearance as this, but these are generally the haunts more of poverty than crime. But there are none in which guilt of all kinds and degrees converges in such volume as on this, the moral plague-spot not only of the metropolis, but also of the kingdom.”_

\- Charles Dickens

The rooms were warm and scented. Heavy drapes blocked out the noise from the street, thick carpets stole footsteps as they fell, and the well-upholstered furniture seemed to swallow people whole. Coffee, tea, and chocolate mixed with wine, spirits, and tobacco; all trapped in this rarefied air. High ceilings echoed with a low murmur of male conversation and the soft tinkle of silver, glass, and porcelain.

The card was meant for Foggy. His friend might be a butcher’s son, but he was English. No amount of education had ever managed to take the old rookery out of Matt’s voice. He was a Londoner born, just like Foggy, but he’d always be a papist bog-lander to some. _Charity boy._ Matt’s days at Oxford had taught him how to act the part, but he could never be comfortable in such a place. His world was loud and cluttered, made of paper-thin walls, crumbling masonry, and rotten floorboards.

Foggy’s heartbeat had quickened when Matt asked him how he’d gotten the invitation. He’d said it was no trouble. _We’ve got friends in high places too._ Matt would have to make it up to him.

When he’d ordered a pot of coffee the waiter’s “of course, Mr Nelson” had been an effusion of sarcasm. Matt hoped the man hadn’t spat in it. He seemed the type. 

“…It’s been taken care of, sir.” murmured the dandy sitting at a table on the other side of the room, tucked behind a screen.

He didn’t know the man’s name. The office floorboards had told Matt that he was of average weight. He put no powder in his hair, took too much snuff, his linens were starched and ironed this morning, and every so often he adjusted a pair of spectacles. His expensive fob-watch had felt like the loudest thing in the room. It was Foggy who’d said he was a dandy.

“Thank you, Wesley.”

Wesley. _More like weasel._ He’d remember the name, but it wasn’t the neatly dressed factotum who interested him. It was the man sitting opposite.

He was harder to make out. They’d already been seated by the time Matt arrived.

A deep voice.

It reminded him a little of his father’s old coves, the prize-fighters who used to mill at Fogwell’s on Old Pye Street. A man who’d had his nose broken a time or two. His accent told Matt he’d spent time of the other side of the world.

“Anything else?” the dandy – Wesley – asked.

“No. I will… dine alone, this evening.”

Damn. Whatever scrap they’d met here to discuss, Matt had missed it. He poured himself another cup of coffee and considered his options. Whoever this man was, he was expert at covering his tracks and leaving Matt with nothing to go on but some very literal dead-ends. He was only here because the weasel with the fob-watch had wanted to gull him and Foggy into defending a snapped cock-sure who was clearly guilty.

Matt took a sip of coffee and looked pointedly away as Mr Wesley left the club’s dining room.

_Now what?_

Mystery man ordered his dinner (white soup, beefsteak, and some roast fowl). Matt didn’t even know if he could afford oysters in a place like this. He wasn’t about to ask the toplofty waiter.

He bit his lip, hesitant. Drawing this man’s attention could have dangerous consequences. But he didn’t know what else to do. Foggy would doubtless advise him that discretion was the better part of valour. Miss Page… honestly, he didn’t know what she’d say. She could be surprising, sometimes.

Matt finished his coffee, stood up, and reached for his cane.

He took a circuitous route around chairs, couches, and tables – making a show of confusion – and eventually sat down in the seat so recently vacated by Mr Wesley.

“Can I… help you?” Low and irritated, the man’s voice rumbled out of a chest that laboured under a great deal of weight. His chair squeaked slightly as he turned his attention to Matt, whose palms began to sweat.

For a second, he had the distinct impression that he’d just sat down to dinner with a bull.

“Oh!” he made a show of leaping back up, flustered, fumbling with his cane. “I do beg your pardon, sir. I had no idea… uh, someone was already sitting here.”

Silence. The man set aside his cutlery. There was the rustle of a napkin.

“Apology accepted.”

There was a finality to those words that told Matt not to push his luck. Causing a scene here would hurt Foggy’s reputation. And that was an end to it. Damn.

“Perhaps…” the man spoke again, slowly, catching him off guard, “you’d…”

Matt waited, his hopes revived, for the words _care to join me._

They didn’t come.

The man’s pulse quickened. He shifted a little in his seat, clenched and unclenched his fists, and smoothed his clothes.

The silence stretched on.

It went from ominous to just plain awkward. 

“Sorry,” Matt said, because one of them had to say _something_.

“No.”

“Uh?”

“No, I… you may sit. It would be pleasant… to have company.”

Oh. _Oh._

One of his Oxford friends had once asked him how he always knew which fellows were open to Greek love and which were only interested in women. It wasn’t magic. He couldn’t point to a gentleman walking down the street and know the answer. But he _could_ tell when a man was contemplating that very same question. _Is he interested, is he like me, can I trust him?_ The galloping heartbeat, the tension in their bodies, the sweat pouring out of them. Sodomy was a pretty petty crime for a man who, if Matt was right, had orchestrated a number of murders, but it was still a hanging offense.

“Thank you, Mr…?”

“Fisk.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr Fisk, my name’s, uh…” he considered lying, but he was here under Foggy’s name. Not exactly incognito. “Murdock.”

“You don’t look like a member, Mr Murdock.”

Matt grinned. “What gave it away?”

Fisk didn’t laugh. Nor did he comment on Matt’s accent, his less than fashionable coat, nor even his blindness.

“I’ll have Marcel bring us another plate. I often request… too much.”

“Too kind,” Matt said, a little too quickly, “but I can take care of it.”

Curse his pride! Why couldn’t he let the fellow pay for the damned food?

“You’re a guest at my club,” the man rumbled. “I insist.”

“All right, then. If you insist.” He nodded, doing his best to keep up the friendly smile. “Do I look that out of place?”

“Not precisely. This club is… a sanctuary. The gamesters go elsewhere and it’s not the place for a spree. You look like a cat with the wind up its tail. Most patrons are… more sedate.”

“You’re right. Not my scene. I’m supposed to be to befriending potential clients with my Irish charm – it’s uh… not going so well. I don’t suppose you’re in need of a lawyer? I’m the barrister and my friend Mr Nelson is the solicitor.”

“I’ve heard of you. Nelson and Murdock. The young idealists who decided to set up in Devil’s Acre.” 

“I’m surprised a man like you takes notice of such a place.”

“I was born there, Mr Murdock.”

“What?” Ho, here was news!

“You don’t believe a gentleman should own to such a thing.”

“I didn’t say that. I was born there myself. It was the nuns who paid for my schooling after my father died. I want to repay that debt. Help others who weren’t so fortunate.”

“A fine notion. I… admire your conviction.”

“What about you?”

“When my own father died, my mother… she sent me to live with relatives. I was young for my age, had never been outside Devil’s Acre, to find myself on a boat bound for America. They had no son, a plantation in the middle of nowhere… those were good years.”

 _Slaves._ Matt fought down a shudder. This obviously wasn’t a man who had qualms about taking sugar with his tea.

“But you came back?”

“Yes.” Another pause. “Time and distance… they afford a certain clarity. I realised that London was a part of me, that it was… in my blood. This city and its future, seeing Devil’s Acre reach its fullest potential, there things are very important to me. I would do anything to make it a better place.”

If someone had told Matt that this man – this canker who fed off suffering – was going to claim that all his crimes were in aid of some higher purpose, he would have laughed. But sitting in front of him and listening to his earnest, halting speech made levity impossible.

“I feel the same way.”

They began to eat, and Matt was reminded just how long it had been since he could afford beefsteak. They reminisced about their fathers, Fisk’s mother, their childhoods in one of London’s most notorious slums. The wine came straight from heaven – the dandy’s pick, it seemed – and he had to be careful not to imbibe too much. He had no doubt that Fisk was entirely capable of drinking him under the table.

When the plates were cleared away, they were brought a dish of walnuts, candied fruit, and a decanter of brandy. Fisk began idly cracking a few of the nuts. Only after a moment did Matt realise the nutcracker was still on the table. A walnut shell split open with a clean crunch beneath his companion’s fingers.

“Shall we order dessert?” Fisk asked.

“As long as you’re buying,” Matt said glibly, his pride thoroughly abandoned, taking a fortifying sip of brandy as another shell cracked open like someone’s skull. “What’s good here?” 

“They make an incredible trifle.”

“At school we called them whim-whams.” Matt smiled. “They always make me think of Christmas. All that custard and cream. I loved it when I was a child.”

“As did I,” Fisk agreed, leaning forward slightly. “Probably a… little too much.”

Matt suspected that Mr Fisk owed very little of his considerable bulk to blubber. His large body possessed a stillness, an audible control, that did not speak of lassitude. No corset creaked about his waist. Matt imagined a tall, heavyset bruiser with close-cropped hair, and shoulders like a gorilla, all done up like a gentleman. 

The trifle, delicious as promised, came and went. Alcohol and nerves played merry hell in Matt’s head. Fisk talked about a property he had just acquired.

“The house is very fine. But not a… fashionable street. I value my privacy.”

“I understand,” Matt said. If he were a criminal, he wouldn’t want high society leaving their calling cards at his door at all hours of the day. And, well, there were _other_ reasons that this man might want to be left alone. “You, uh… haven’t done this for a while, have you?”

“No. I’ve been… preoccupied. For a long time now.”

Silence. Again.

“We could…?” He left the sentence hanging.

“Hm.”

Matt sensed that he was being carefully appraised and was glad of his spectacles. He quirked a smile. This man did not trust easily. Even a potential lover did not readily gain access to his thoughts. Matt suddenly wondered if his plan was even worth the trouble. Fisk seemed like the paranoid type. He wouldn’t keep his papers where his servants or nosy guests could lay hands on them. Maybe he should end this now? He had a name, a history, something to go on. He didn’t _need_ to follow through.

Fisk pushed out his chair and stood. And all the subtle movements, all the control – all the hints that added up to a person in Matt’s brain – had not prepared him for the sheer _size_ of the man. He got up from his own chair in sheer self-defence, some animal part of him whispering _he’s going to eat you alive_.

“Only if it is… agreeable to you,” the giant murmured shyly.

He’d sensed that Fisk was nervous, but he’d interpreted those gruff pleasantries as the words of a wealthy man mindful of his reputation. No, it was his _heart_ he was guarding, not his reputation. Hell. _Just walk away, Murdock, run if you have to._

Fisk offered him his arm, ostensibly to guide him out of the club.

Matt took it and felt like a pony harnessed to a draft-horse.

He didn’t have to take the large, meaty hand that helped him into a spacious landau and four. He didn’t have to walk up the six steps to a spacious front hall or the twenty curving stairs to the upper floor. He didn’t have to drink an excruciating dish of tea while Fisk worked up the courage to ask for the unmentionable.

He didn’t have to say _yes._

Matt always thought the myth about the queen – what was her name, Pasiphae? – who got tupped by a bull was complete balderdash. But this felt damned close to it. For all his nerves, Fisk wasn’t a novice. Maybe he was shy with all his lovers? With his background, Matt didn’t want to think about how he’d gained such experience.

No, they weren’t Pasiphae and the bull. They were Theseus and the fucking Minotaur. This was the darkness at the centre of the labyrinth. The creaking bed and the terrifyingly strong hands holding him in position, the deep voice growling into the nape of his neck. His bruised ribs ached but, feckless, he ignored both them and the danger, wrapping himself around Fisk’s profound _solidity_. His lover wore fat like a wolf wrapped in sheepskin. A doughy face, pensive with concentration, pressed into his arching spine. 

The monster nuzzled his ear.

“You are… _beautiful_.”

Hoarse, hesitating, and reverential. Matt shivered.

_Bless me, father, for I have sinned._

**Author's Note:**

> I looked up what zuppa inglese is and it's literally trifle. So that's what they're eating, lol.


End file.
